### The Issue of AI-Generated Spam in Search Results
#### Introduction
Recently, I encountered an article titled “Adobe Says It Won’t Train AI Using Artists’ Work. Creatives Aren’t Convinced.” This article appeared second in the search results. The top result was from Syrus #Blog, with a headline that felt eerily familiar: “When Adobe promised not to train AI on artists’ content, the creative community reacted with skepticism.”
#### Discovery of Plagiarized Content
Upon clicking the top link, I landed on a spammy website filled with plagiarized articles. These articles were repackaged versions of original content, including the WIRED piece, with only minor changes in phrasing. Even the original quotes were copied. A single hyperlink at the bottom of the page led back to the original WIRED story, serving as the only form of attribution.
#### Multilingual Plagiarism
The bot wasn’t just copying English journalism. I found versions of this plagiarized content in 10 other languages, including many languages that WIRED publishes in.
#### Google’s Response to Spam
Google has been working on new spam policies to improve search results. By the end of April, Google announced that major adjustments to remove unhelpful results from its search engine ranking system were completed. Elizabeth Tucker, a director of product management at Google, wrote:
“As of April 19, we’ve completed the rollout of these changes. You’ll now see 45 percent less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results versus the 40 percent improvement we expected across this work.”
#### Industry Reactions
When approached for a response, Google declined to comment specifically about Syrus. The overarching sentiment among SEO experts is one of anxiety. Andrew Boyd, a consultant at [Forte Analytica](https://forteanalytica.co.uk/), expressed:
“Our industry suffers from some form of trauma, and I’m not even really joking about that. I think one of the main reasons for that is because there’s no recourse if you’re one of these publishers that’s been affected. All of a sudden you wake up in the morning, and 50 percent of your traffic is gone.”
#### Mixed Opinions on Google’s Efforts
While many SEO experts are upset with the lack of transparency about Google’s changes, not everyone is critical. Eli Schwartz, author of [Product-Led SEO](https://www.elischwartz.co/book), stated:
“Actually, Google doesn’t get enough credit for this, but Google’s biggest challenge is spam. So, despite all the complaints we have about Google’s quality now, you don’t do a search for hardware and then find adult sites. They’re doing a good enough job.”
Google continues to release [smaller search updates](https://searchengineland.com/google-june-2024-spam-update-done-rolling-out-443504) to combat spam.
#### Conclusion
While Google sometimes offers a decent user experience by filtering out inappropriate content, it is reasonable to expect more from such a powerful company. The prevalence of low-quality, AI-generated content in search results is frustrating for many in the industry. Ray, an industry professional, noted:
“It’s frustrating, because we see we’re trying to do the right thing, and then we see so many examples of this low-quality, AI stuff outperforming us. So I’m hopeful that it’s temporary, but it’s leading to a lot of tension and a lot of animosity in our industry, in ways that I’ve personally never seen before in 15 years.”
Unless spammy sites with AI content are removed from search results, publishers will have less incentive to produce high-quality content, and users will have less reason to trust the websites appearing at the top of Google News.
3 Comments
Can AI spam really be that bad or are we overreacting?
Well, welcome to the era of algorithm anarchy.
Another win for the robots, but at what cost?